by Lesley Stahl (60 Minutes/CBS News) Marshall Medoff unveils to 60 Minutes his innovative method of turning plant life into fuel and other useful products — … What (Craig)Masterman helped implement was Medoff’s novel idea of using these large blue machines called electron accelerators to break apart nature’s chokehold on the valuable sugars inside plant life – or biomass. Machines like these are typically used to strengthen materials such as wiring and cable. Medoff’s invention was to use the accelerator the opposite way – to break biomass apart.

Lesley Stahl: Maybe you can tell us how the electron accelerator works.

Craig Masterman: It’s pretty simple. It’s basically accelerated electricity. And so what happens is is that they get accelerated–

Lesley Stahl: Downward.

Craig Masterman: Downward where the biomass is, and they ram into the biomass and rip it apart.

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His inventive use of the accelerators caught the attention of investors who saw a potential goldmine in the technology.They gave Medoff’s company – Xyleco – hundreds of millions of dollars, allowing him to scale up and build this factory – in Moses Lake, Washington – so he could turn his invention into reality. It’s scheduled to be fully operational this spring.

Here, agricultural residue, like these corn cobs, is trucked in from nearby farms, ground up, blasted by the electron accelerator and then combined with a proprietary enzyme mix.

This process, Medoff’s remarkable invention, releases plant sugars that he’s now using to make products he claims will solve some of the world’s most intractable problems, affecting not just the environment but also our health. One of the plant sugars is called xylose and Medoff says it could reduce obesity and diabetes, since it is consumable, and low in calories.

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With the investor funds, Medoff also opened a $45 million testing facility in Wakefield, Massachusetts, a far cry from the garage. And he hired more than 70 scientists and engineers who have come up with a sugar-based product aimed at another impervious problem, some call it a plague, the accumulation of plastic debris.

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Medoff makes plastic from plants. It seemed to us that his product was hard to distinguish from regular plastic except in one key way. Chemical engineer David Jablonski says that Xyleco’s bio-plastic invention can be programmed to disintegrate over specific time spans, ranging from years to as quickly as 11 weeks.

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Perhaps Medoff’s most consequential discovery is how to extract the plant sugars and convert them into to environmentally-friendly biofuels: ethanol, gasoline and jet fuel.

Lesley Stahl:And I’m told that you call this thing a still.

Marshall Medoff: It is a still.

Lesley Stahl: It is a still?

Marshall Medoff: It’s actually making alcohol right now. Alcohol that you can drink, or you can put in your car, or you can do both.

Marshall Medoff: Here we are, on the road again.

Lesley Stahl: So Marshall, I am driving a huge truck on biomass fuel. It doesn’t feel any different than normal gas to me.

Marshall Medoff: No. It wouldn’t. No.

Medoff’s ethanol is much better than regular corn ethanol in terms of greenhouse gas emissions – 77 percent better, according to a study that was independently reviewed.

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He outsmarted MIT and now he’s lured some pretty powerful men to his board of directors, including former Shell Oil executive Sir John Jennings, and three former cabinet secretaries – Steve Chu of the Department of Energy, George Shultz, former secretary of state and former defense secretary, William Perry.

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Dr. Steven Chu: It can make a significant dent.

A possible 30 percent dent in the petroleum market, according to a report by the Department of Energy. READ MORE includes VIDEO